Oncogenic miR-132 sustains proliferation and self-renewal potential by inhibition of polypyrimidine tract-binding protein 2 in glioblastoma cells

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the leading type of brain tumor, exhibiting unlimited proliferation and invasion potential. The present study indicated that a high expression level of miR‑132 was detected in the neural subtype of GBM and predicted an unfavorable prognosis for patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas cohort (n=526). Cox hazard regression analysis demonstrated miR‑132 as an independent prognostic indicator for GBM patients. Further in vitro experiments indicated that miR‑132 promoted the proliferation and sphere formation of U87 cells. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering analysis was performed to compare differently expressed genes between two Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets and Gene Ontology analysis was applied to evaluate the significant signaling pathways modulated by miR‑132 in GBM cells within a genetic bioinformatic lab, the Gene‑Cloud of Biotechnology Information. By combining the results based on GEO datasets and the miRNA bioinformatic prediction, polypyrimidine tract‑binding protein 2 (PTBP2), a brain tissue‑specific post‑transcriptional protein, was identified as a potential downstream target of miR‑132 in GBM. Thus, miR‑132 overexpression in GBM cells predicted an unfavorable outcome for patients, and sustained the proliferation and self‑renewal abilities of GBM cells in an miR‑132/PTBP2 signaling pathway.